![]() Norma Jeane Baker with her mother, Gladys Leaming also claims that Volga was also an alcoholic – a condition referred to by the family as her ‘illness’. It is possible, Leaming suggests, that these were efforts on Volga’s part to protect Rita. Volga would often accompany Margarita on excursions to Mexico, leaving her sons unsupervised. She described Margarita as very timid, and recalled that she slept with her mother, while Eduardo and the boys had their own bedrooms. While Eduardo’s show-business peers found him charming, Parkin thought of him as ‘a petty little tyrant’. Leaming also interviewed Loretta Parkin, who was a neighbour of the Cansinos as a child. And the allegations have never been directly challenged. However, it seems unlikely that Welles invented such a shocking claim outright – especially as he had remained fond of Rita long after their divorce, and had no axe to grind. Leaming does not quote Welles directly, and her book was published shortly after both Welles and Rita died. Sceptics have pointed out that Welles was a raconteur, who tended to exaggerate. Her second husband, Orson Welles, is reported to have told Leaming that Rita was repeatedly abused by her father, Eduardo. In her 1989 biography, If This Is Happiness, Barbara Leaming claimed that Margarita was a victim of incest. I just don’t think it’s very good to have to learn it so young.’ ‘It was a family tradition but the reason I had to do it professionally was that we were broke…I learned a certain kind of discipline. ‘Honey, they had me dancing as soon as they could get me on my feet,’ Rita told author John Kobal in 1973. Her parents would lock her in the dressing room while they socialised. As she was underage and therefore prohibited from working in venues that sold alcohol, the duo performed mainly on offshore gambling boats and in Mexican nightclubs. In 1927, the Cansinos moved to Hollywood, where Eduardo established a dance studio.Īt thirteen, Margarita left school and replaced Elisa as her father’s dancing partner. Her first public performance soon followed. But by the age of four, Margarita was having daily lessons at Carnegie Hall. and Vernon, neither of whom showed any flair for the family trade. She went on to have two more sons, Eduardo Jr. Eduardo was newly married to Volga Haworth, a teenage showgirl from a respectable Irish-American family, who had run away from home in Washington to join Ziegfeld’s Follies.Īfter Margarita’s birth, Volga gave up her career. ![]() With his sister Elisa as partner, they became one of Broadway’s most popular acts. Her father, Eduardo, had emigrated from Spain five years before, as one half of The Dancing Cansinos. ![]() Margarita Carmen Cansino was born in Brooklyn in 1918. In 1946, the image was used to decorate the test bomb exploded on Bikini Atoll, nicknamed ‘Gilda’ after Hayworth’s latest movie. Until a bathing suit-clad Betty Grable showed off her ‘million dollar legs’, Landry’s photo made Rita the most popular pin-up among American troops. Gazing boldly at the camera, Hayworth seemed to promise more than the artful illusion of glamour. And the white silk negligee that she wore may have been borrowed from Columbia’s wardrobe department. Here, Landry depicted a far more seductive Rita, either relaxing in her own bedroom as the caption claimed, or on a studio prop bed. But this delightfully natural image made less impact than another picture inside the magazine. She was pictured in a white bikini, grinning as photographer Bob Landry caught her eating lunch on a Los Angeles beach. In August 1941 – less than four months before the bombing of Pearl Harbour plunged America into World War II – Rita Hayworth graced the cover of Life magazine. Rita Hayworth, photographed by Bob Landry (1941)
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |